American Express Wants You To Know They Aren’t Formally Endorsing Google Wallet
Google is coming under some fire today, after the company went ahead with a huge (and necessary) update to their Google Wallet service. Yesterday, Google Wallet was updated with the ability for users to add any credit card of their choosing to the digital wallet service and that didn’t sit too well with American Express. According to AmEx, they had been in talks with Google about a partnership, but never formally agreed to anything. That prompted American Expresses social media VP Bradley Minor to release this statement to TechCrunch:
“We want to make sure Google’s mobile wallet product meets the standards we set for our Cardmembers in terms of transparency and clarity about transaction detail. Right now, American Express does not have an agreement with Google for our cards to be used in the Google mobile wallet.”
The reason for this being when an American Express customer uses Google Wallet to pay for a purchase instead of their card, detailed information about the transaction isn’t given to merchants. Instead, a “virtual Mastercard card number” will be issued in its place. On the user’s credit card statement, the transaction apparently wont show the specific merchant the purchase was made at, and that’s what’s keeping AmEx from going all-in with Google Wallet. Well, that and the fact that they’ve already teamed up for rival mobile payment service ISIS. It’s these reasons AmEx could pull the plug on Google Wallet altogether, removing themselves from the service entirely.